“STAYING ON COURSE WITH GOD”
TEXT: HEBREWS 12:1-2a
Sunday, July 4, 2004
There is a sense that, in summer, church kind of slows down. Sometimes you get the feeling that church kind of shuts down. Well it doesn’t shut down; but it just kind of slows down. Being a Christian is a year-long thing; it is never ending; it is a lifelong experience. The only difference between now and the rest of the year is that we go at a different pace; the pace is a little slower, which is good. It’s good to slow down in our lives and grow.
The Christian life itself is not a sprint, it is a marathon. I think sometimes we grow in spurts; it feels like a sprint at times. I know the 40 Days of Purpose felt like a sprint to some, but all series are like that. I preach in series because I think we grow in spurts, but it’s important to realize that we spurt, and then we pace ourselves, because Christianity is really a lifelong pursuit. It is something we learn for a lifetime so it is important for us to be patient with ourselves and patient with God’s working in our lives. I avoid saying the phrase that we should pace ourselves because when you think of someone pacing themselves, the connotation is you shouldn’t really get all that serious about your faith. You stay the middle road and are mediocre and not too intense. That is really not what I would like to say. I would like to say that it is important to be intense and take your faith seriously, but it’s important to be patient in your growth. You will finish. You will receive the gold medal of salvation if you do these things.
Last week we talked about the importance of reading God’s word, spending time in God’s word, about staying connected to the church family, and about following up on the things that we decided to do. When we are on that spiritual mountaintop, it is important for us to follow through, realizing it is a real experience, God touches us, and we need to follow through on our commitments. Today I would like to continue that and add some more things to what we can do to grow spiritually. Referring to Hebrews 12 and probably just verse 1, I have two different translations, and I like them both. One has some strength in it in different areas, but here is what it says. Hebrews 12:1 (if you want to turn with me in your Bibles, you may if you learn better that way). Here is what it says: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith . . . .” [Let’s pray]
What are some of the things we can do to stay on course? I am using an analogy of a runner in a race because that is the analogy that the apostle Paul uses or the writer of Hebrews uses in this text. The image is of a marathon runner who is running during the Olympic races. What are we to do? The first things we can do (adding on one of the things from last week) is captured in the phrase ‘surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.’ What is that referring to? You see the word therefore, and every time you hear the word therefore there is a wherefore. Therefore is a reflection upon what was just said. What was just said was in Hebrews 11-the writer talks about the heroes of faith.
What does it mean then that we are surrounded by this great cloud of the heroes of faith? The reflection is on the marathon and if you have ever seen the Olympics, you know that at the end of the marathon the runners run into the coliseum and they run around the track four times and everyone cheers. I remember that picture. Who was the U.S. runner that ran the one year in the 70’s? I was trying to remember his name and I couldn’t remember it. Yes, Frank Short. I remember to this day Frank Short running. It was wonderful. Is that the sense of this text?
Is the writer saying that we have this great cloud of heroes of faith who are in heaven cheering us on, saying we can do it, and they are praying for us. A lot of people read it that way, but the answer is really no. I think the New Living translation captures the meaning of this phrase. It says “therefore we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith.” The added phrase to the life of faith is really what this cloud of witnesses is doing. We have for us a group of people who have already lived the faith and they are recorded for us. They have been there and they have down that, and there are some lessons from their lives that we can learn, that we can grow from. That is what the writer is trying to say to us.
You will be able to stay on course in your life and in your faith if you look at those who have gone before and learn from their lives. If you want to stay on course in your life and in your spiritual growth, it is important to read in scripture those who have already lived it, and learn from their mistakes and learn from their examples. I think, as a Christian, even as a young person, I found some of the best reading in the entire Bible to be the historical books, and Don even quoted one today - 1 Chronicles. The historical books of the Bible are books like Exodus, (forget Leviticus, forget Numbers too, there is too much counting), Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, the Gospels, Acts and even the Epistles really, even though they are letters, they reflect the history of the time. They are great reading. I am telling you, you learn so much as you listen to those who have already gone before you, and the struggles they had, the things they encountered, the responses to God, and the mistakes that they made.
For instance, if you want to learn about grace, you have got to read King David, read about David. Although he blew it, he blew it on the number one temptation of all time. The one that is all the through the Bible, that people continue to fall to, the one that is obvious. He blew it big time and yet you discover how gracious God was towards him. Maybe you blew it in your life. It is important to read David and discover that you can recover from that.
If you want an intellectual approach to the Christian faith, read the apostle Paul, read Solomon; read Ecclesiastes and see what life is like without God. If you want to learn about suffering, you have got to read Job. If you want to learn about self esteem and offering yourselves to God and what God can do through a person who avails himself to God in spite of their handicaps, you have got to read Moses. Look at Esther if you want to learn about taking risks in your life. If you want to learn about faith, you read Abraham.
If it is true about reading biblical characters, it is probably true about looking at the saints of history, those Christian people who have become famous for their faith. I would encourage you, if you want to grow in your faith, to read an autobiography by a great Christian person: C.S. Lewis, Fannie Crosby, D.L. Moody, Teresa Avila. There are a lot of great Christian people who have gone before, and you discover when you read their autobiographies just how human they were. We set them on pinnacles but they are human just like us, and they can be a great encouragement in your faith.
I think it applies to having a mentoring relationship. Do you have a friend, a Christian person that you look up to, someone who is really mature and who kind of has it together in their Christian faith and life? I encourage you to develop a relationship with that person and learn from them. Learn from those who lived out their faith - learn from them.
I think covenant groups or small groups can be that for us as long as in the covenant groups there is a real spirit of graciousness and honesty with each other, that we are not judgmental and not self-righteous, but very real, and the group tries to pull out the best in us instead of criticizing the worst. If you have that type of connection with someone or that type of small group, it will build life into you and it will be a great encouragement to your life and faith.
I think one of the great mistakes of the 20th and the 21st centuries in America is the fact that we are a do-it-yourself people. We believe we have to do everything ourselves, that in every issue we have to reinvent the wheel, and we become arrogant. We haven’t listened to those who have already been there, who have already lived through things. They have already tried some of the directions that we are going and have discovered that they were a mistake. We are not listening to the generations who have gone before us, and the proverbial wisdom they have passed down to us. As a result of using trial and error in every issue of our life, some of us are going down roads that are going to harm us, and they are going to take a toll upon our family and our children. If there is anything that scripture tells us is important for us, instead of reinventing the wheel, we can skip all that trial and error and go right to learning the lessons. We can get ourselves on the right road by listening to those who have already been down those many roads, and by listening to the lessons they have learned about how to make it in life.
The second thing we can do to stay on course comes from the phrase the New Living translation says stripping off every weight I am not sure I like the first word stripping off I think I want to avoid that one and go to the NIV where it says to throw off every thing that hinders. What is he talking about? Again, it is the analogy of the marathon runner. If you know someone who is a great runner or who is a marathon runner, you will learn that there are two types of weights that you can throw off. There are the obvious ones, but then there are the less obvious, the things that you don’t really think about unless you are a marathon runner or you know someone who has made it to the Olympics.
In fact, it is a good year for this message because the Olympics are coming. (Listen to the stories - what it takes to be an Olympic-type athlete). Of course, there are some obvious things, no-brainers, what it takes to be a great runner. For instance, you can’t run in office clothes, right? That’s a no-brainer. You can’t run in dress shoes, right? It takes a special type of shoe and also light weight clothing. You can’t be one hundred pounds overweight and be a marathoner. Am I right about that? That’s obvious. You can’t be a couch potato- you have got to run some if you are going to be a marathoner. You have to train and you have to run. That’s a no-brainer.
The same thing is true spiritually. There are some no-brainers. There are some things that are obvious, things everyone knows. You can’t do these things and grow spiritually. For instance, you can’t participate in willful sins in your life - things that you know are wrong and you do them anyway. You cannot grow spiritually if you are living that type of lifestyle. You cannot grow spiritually if you are too busy for God and do not have time for God. That is obvious. You cannot grow spiritually if you don’t spend time in worship and the study of God’s Word. That is obvious.
What are the less obvious things? In marathon running, if you listen to the stories of Olympic runners, you discover some things. It is different for every runner, but for some to get to that level they couldn’t go to public schools. Schools took up too much of their time so they had to be tutored privately. Many of them have no normal schedules. They get up at 5:00 in the morning. I heard the story of one Olympic swimmer who got up every morning at 5:00 a.m. and swam three miles, then had a break and had lunch, did their studies, went back and swam in the afternoon, and then swam again in the evening time. They have this schedule that is just not normal. They have eating habits that are very different. There are certain foods you cannot eat. There are certain activities you do not participate in because of the fear of injury.
The same is true spiritually. If we really are going to make it in our faith and we really are going to grow, there are some things that are just less obvious, that are neither right nor wrong, just some things that will get in our way. How you define these for yourself in your own Christian life is simply to ask yourself the question what hinders me from my relationship with God? What keeps me from a total commitment to him? What gets in my way of growing in my faith? For some it may be the internet. It may be too great a temptation for you. Maybe the morning newspaper consumes too much of your time - you are reading old news anyway. It may be the television. It may be a video store. It may be a particular possession that consumes too much of your time or too much of your wealth. It may be your home. It may be your second home. It may be your job. It may be your second job. It may be your form of entertainment. I know one guy who spent his entire life golfing -every weekend- his entire life - and his daughters never knew him. Maybe your form of entertainment is getting in your way of your relationship with God. Maybe it is your hobby.
I can’t define it for you. I can’t tell you what is getting in the way of your relationship with God because it differs for all of us. One of the great fears I have of the average American citizen, even as Christian people (and I wonder about myself a lot of times), is that as we live in a prosperous nation (and God really has blessed us), I wonder sometimes whether or not we live as though earth is heaven. We try to make it heaven. We live as though earth is eternal rather than a temporary state. We invest so much of our time and energy and effort in building our little kingdoms here that we have nothing left for building God’s kingdom in our hearts and our lives, or for using our resources to build God’s kingdom; not realizing that our lives, our homes, the time that we have, are all rental. Our time is rented. Where we live is a rental. You don’t own it whether you have paid it off or not. One day you will die and I will die and someone else will move into that home. It’s just a rental. I am wondering if we are spending too much time tinkering with a rental instead of spending time building into the eternal.
Lastly, the third thing that will help us grow in our faith is caught up by the phrase, the race marked out for us. I find it interesting that it’s in the past tense. The race marked out for us. The Christian life, the Christian faith, the way of salvation, how we are to live here until we get to heaven is not something we have to invent. It’s already laid out for us. The course has already been designed, it’s there. Like a marathon race, the runners don’t design the course, the course is already there for them. All they have to do is run it and stay on course. They don’t have to come in first. It’s nice to come in first but you don’t have to come in first. You don’t have to run extremely well for the Christian faith, at least. All you have to do is finish. All you have to do is cross the line.
Well how do I know what to do in my life, what course to follow? Well, you do what the author says. Who is the front runner? Who marked out the course? Who is the front runner? Well, verse two says it’s Jesus. Jesus is the lead man. When I think of a lead man, I think of the front runner. The Tour de France has just started. The lead man that everyone is going to be chasing – Lance. They follow the lead man. They pace themselves with the lead man. Think of the pace car in the NASCAR. For me, when I think of looking to the runner ahead, I think of driving. I think of driving at night time - driving at night - especially when it’s raining. When those situations happen, I can’t see the edges of the road, so how do I make sure I stay on the road? I follow and make sure I drive slow enough to have someone in front of me and I look at the red lights in front of me and I follow the car that’s leading the way. I am pretty confident as long as they don’t run off the road. If they run off the road, I am off the road with them. As long as I know they are on the road, I will be just fine. In our faith, Jesus is that front runner and he is not running off the road. He is staying the course - he got to heaven. If we follow him, we will as well.
The question for us all: Is Christ the front runner of our lives? Is Christ the focus of our lives? Who or what is the focus of your life? Who or what is leading your life? What drives you? What pushes your life? For some it’s fear: the fear of failure, the fear of bad things happening. For others, it’s the approval of their parents or a peer group. For some it’s materialism or simply staying ahead of the bills so the collector doesn’t come. For some it’s Dr. Atkins or Agatston, the writer of The South Beach Diet because the focus is the perfect body. Obviously, that is not me. I am surprised that for many Christian people, the front runner in their spiritual life is Dan Brown, the writer of The DaVinci Code which I see is really the Michael Moore of Christianity – it’s all fabrication – it’s all myth. I am surprised by how many Christian people have Dan Brown as the front runner of their Christian faith. For some its peer groups or maybe it’s a star, maybe it’s David Bach, the writer of The Automatic Millionaire.
Who are you following? What’s setting the pace of your life and what are you chasing after? If you want to grow in your faith, the only answer is Jesus Christ. Is Jesus Christ your front runner, the pacesetter of your life? I can’t answer that for you- only you can.
So let’s take some time to pray and prepare ourselves for communion. Ask yourselves – maybe you are sitting there right now and you are realizing – you know, I have been in church for a long time, I have been a Christian or I thought I was, but if I were to tell the truth, what’s really driving my life is ________. What would that be for you? Maybe today is a good day to claim your independence from those things, to claim your dependence upon God and experience his real freedom in your life.
[Let’s pray.]
